The poster is probably referring to folks with pre-existing conditions who couldn't get insurance either affordably or at all prior to the ACA and who would've faced utterly insurmountable treatment bills without insurance.

Read through the article here. There's a collection of quotes from YCombinator startup founders about how the ACA helped them. Several founders were uninsurable without the ACA.

But that doesn't mean the ACA saved their lives, it means ACA allowed them to continue with their startups rather than find coverage working for any of a plethora of big businesses. That is obviously still a good thing, but to claim that those founders literally would have died without the ACA seems misleading at best.

Maybe they couldn't get a job with one of those big businesses, due to lack of credentials, or maybe the disease prevented it.

There are thousands of people whose lives were saved by this. Nitpicking over on example seems rather unproductive.

Pre-existing conditions were covered before the ACA?

Pre-existing conditions prevented many from getting health care.

Pre-existing conditions

Yep, you nailed it. Had it not been for ACA, making the career leap to co-founder would have been incredibly difficult. Two years later, it's a honor to be able to provide insurance to our employees.

My wife works for a very small business -- five people, to be exact. They get group insurance through the company providing their payroll processing. Not by going directly to the exchange. It seems like that should be an option any founder of a small business could take advantage of?

Yes, the group insurance through a payroll processor is a great solution. That's what we do now.

The caveat is that it only works if you're collecting a paycheck, but not if you're bootstrapping from savings.

You are putting the poster on the spot in a public forum about something that, depending on the circumstances, could be very personal and private (or not, but we don't know and nor should we ask). There are plenty of examples elsewhere. See Sam's post.

The poster can decide how much information they want to share. It is not useful, however, for them to contribute completely empty anecdotes. For as highly as the comment was upvoted, it should have more substance.